


Ghost Rimmer

by Evilida



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: A Christmas Carol, Alternate Universe, Gen, Ghosts, Halloween story, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 14:24:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12060816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilida/pseuds/Evilida
Summary: How would life on Red Dwarf be different if Arnold Rimmer had come back as a ghost rather than as a soft-light hologram?  Hardly different at all, it turns out.  Written for Halloween (but very early because I'm going to be busy in October.)





	Ghost Rimmer

“I’m a ghost?” Arnold Rimmer asked the ship's computer, his voice climbing the very peaks of its register.

Holly’s pixelated face nodded.

“You mean the kind that go around wearing sheets with eyeholes cut out of them and saying “Woooo”?”

“No, the other kind of ghost. The kind that tap dances and spins plates. Of course that kind of ghost, Arn.”

Rimmer frowned. “If I’m going to be a ghost, I should at least be a good one. I should have some chains to rattle or carry my head in a basket or something. I’m hardly scary at all.“

Holly shrugged, which was a difficult thing for a disembodied head to pull off.

“Not in charge of props, me. I’ve got enough to do running the ship without looking after ghosts, too.”

“So why have I been brought back to haunt the Red Dwarf? I’ve been dead three million years so why now?”

“Don’t know much about ghosts to tell you the truth,” Holly said musingly. “Back in my day, only nutters believed in ghosts. The kind of people who thought that fairies live in the bottom of the garden and aliens built the pyramids.”

“But aliens did build the pyramids!” Rimmer said.

Holly gave him a pitying look and disappeared from the screen.

 

* * *

 

Rimmer had always had a purpose in life – to become an officer and make his parents proud of him – but his life was over and he’d never achieved his goal. He had been a failure in life. Was he destined to be a failure In death, too? Would his after-life be as meaningless as his life? 

The Cat avoided Rimmer. The ghost gave off a kind of static charge, which made the Cat’s hair stand on end. The evolved feline complained that being near “the see-through guy” spoiled his carefully styled coiffure. Rimmer had no hope of finding the Cat when he didn’t want to be found, and in any case, the Cat would be no help. Cat knew exactly what his own purpose was – to spread joy by being the most dazzling, best-looking creature that had ever lived. All other persons only existed to feed him, play with him, and admire him. (And to have sex with him, if said person was a lady cat.) Utterly certain of his own place at the centre of the universe, the Cat would not be able to understand Rimmer’s post-existential dilemma.

Rimmer had no choice but to go to David Lister, his former bunkmate. At least Lister was arguably human. That Rimmer had to go to an ignorant Scouser with the grooming habits of a pig in muck was proof of the ghost’s desperation.

David Lister was, in general, a tolerant and fair-minded bloke, but ghosts gave him the heebie-jeebies. When Rimmer entered a room, Lister left it. However, this time Rimmer wasn’t going to let him escape. The ghost stood in the doorway of the bunkroom, and if Lister wanted to get away, he’d have to go through Arnold Rimmer to do it. He had walked through the ghost once by accident, and the experience had not been pleasant for either of them. Lister was trapped.

“What do you want, Rimmer?” Lister asked.

“I want to know why I'm here. Why have I been brought back as a ghost?”

“And you’re asking me? How am I supposed to know tha’? I’m no expert on ghosts.”

“But you’ve seen all the movies, right? All the ones I never saw because I was too busy revising for my astro-navs.”

“Which you failed anyway.”

“Please, Lister, help me out here!” Rimmer pleaded.

Rimmer hardly ever said ‘please’- at least not to a lowly third technician- so Lister knew that finding a purpose for his ghostly existence had to be very important to Rimmer. He gave the matter a bit of thought.

“Well, in A Christmas Carol, the ghosts came back to teach Ebenezer Scrooge to be a better man. And in Poltergeist, they were angry because someone built houses over their graves.”

“I’m not a poltergeist,” Rimmer said forlornly. “I wish I were. They can touch things, the jammy bastards. So I must be here to make you a better man, like the ghosts in A Christmas Carol. I’m here to make you less slobby, to help you apply yourself. ”

Spending the rest of his life with a ghost hell-bent on improving him did not sound like much fun to David Lister.

“Not necessarily,” he said. “Sometimes ghosts come back because they have unfinished business – something that they meant to do but didn’t get around to before they died.”

“Like me becoming an officer!”

“How you going to become an officer when there’s no one left alive to promote you? Besides the Space Corps doesn’t even exist anymore.”

“If I pass my astro-navigation exams, then Holly will promote me automatically. All I have to do is pass, and I’ll have achieved my life’s goal and I’ll be free!”

“How you gonna do tha’, Rimmer? You’ve tried ten times and you’ve never come close. Everytime you try, you do worse than the time before. Your last exam score was minus 3.”

Rimmer waved away Lister’s objections.

“That was when I had a body. I was distracted from my revision by having to eat and sleep. Now that I’m a being of pure intellect…” (Lister burst out laughing but ghostly Rimmer ignored him.) “I should have no difficulty whatsoever.”

Rimmer was bad enough at the best of times, but when he was studying for exams, all his unpleasant traits were magnified tenfold. The former second technician had no aptitude for astro-navigation. His inability to understand the material frustrated him, and he took out his frustrations on his unfortunate bunkmate. He made Lister’s life a living nightmare.

“Hang on a minute. In A Christmas Carol, Marley came back to atone for the sins he’d committed in life. He’d been a right greedy beggar, totally heartless, stealing from orphans, kicking starving widows and children out of their houses, that sort of thing. So Marley came back to put things right.”

“That can’t be it,” Rimmer said. “I haven’t done anything that I have to atone for.”

“What about not fixing the drive plate properly and killing everyone on the ship?”

“Don’t exaggerate, Lister. I didn’t kill everyone. You’re still alive, aren’t you? And besides, it wasn’t my fault. Repairing the drive plate is a two-person job and I had to do it all on my own. If you hadn’t been in stasis…”

Lister shook his head, making his dreadlocks dance.

“That’s you all over, isn’t it? Always trying to avoid responsibility for your mistakes. It’s always someone else’s fault with you.”

“Well, it always is!”

“Maybe you’ve been brought back so that you can learn to take responsibility for your actions. Maybe that’s the lesson you’ve got to learn before you can go on to the next world. This is your chance to grow up, Rimmer – to be a proper man instead of a whinger!”

“No, Lister. You had it right the first time. I have to pass the astro-navs and become an officer. I don’t know how I missed it. Sometimes, I overthink things, and it takes a really simple person to point out the obvious.

I’ll get Holly to put my name on the list for the next astro-navigation exam. I’d better hit the books. The next sitting is only six months from now.   The first step is to make a proper revision time-table. I’ll get the skutters to help me. I’ll need a set of coloured pencils, a ruler and a t-square…”

Lister groaned. Life on Red Dwarf had just gone from bad to worse.

 

 


End file.
